Bull Whackers
Canvass-topped “prairie schooners,” loaded with lead from Mineral Point and Shullsburg, were a novelty at Milwaukee in the 1840s. The hauling was done largely by ox-drawn “sucker” teams, which came up from Illinois in the spring, and returned in the fall. At Milwaukee the lead was transferred to lake schooners, to be shipped to the eastern seaboard.
“The teamsters or ‘bull whackers’ were a peculiar race,” wrote one Milwaukeean, “never to be found except on the frontier. They were mostly 'suckers' from Illinois, or 'pukes' from Missouri. Their clothing consisted of a red flannel shirt, (coat or vest they never wore,) Kentucky jeans, stogy boots, into which their pants were always stuffed, and an old broad-brimmed felt or straw hat. They drove from four to eight yoke of oxen each, attached to a great canvas-covered wagon, in which they carried their lead, and in which they slept, as they never entered a house to sleep, from spring until fall. Their whips consisted of a stock some twelve feet in length, with a lash in proportion, upon the end of which was a cracker that made a report like a pistol. These they handled with great skill and terrible effect, making the hair fly from an ox at every cut, like down from a thistle. “There generally were eight or ten teams in a company, and to hear their whips crack, when stalled in a mud hole, made one think of picket firing. Their language, if it might be called such, would have made a Bohemian crazy, but their profanity was perfect. Their living consisted of salt bacon, corn dodgers and mighty poor whisky. Few could read, and probably not one in five could tell his age.” On the return trip westward, sucker teams often hauled immigrants and supplies. The usual route passed through Waukesha and Madison, or farther south by Troy, to avoid the marshes. |